BOOK I.] APHORISMS. 



even tliink that they have pursued or attained some great object 

 in their accomplishment. 



LXXXIX. Nor should we neglect to observe that natural 

 philosophy has, in every age, met with a troublesome and difii 

 cult opponent : I mean superstition, and a blind and immoderatt 

 zeal for religion. For we see that, among the Greeks, those who 

 first disclosed the natural causes of thunder and storms to the 

 yet untrained ears of man were condemned as guilty of impiety 

 towards the gods. d Nor did some of the old fathers of Chris 

 tianity treat those much better who showed by the most positive 

 proofs (such as no one now disputes) that the earth is spherical, 

 and thence asserted that there were antipodes.* 



Even in the present state of things the condition of discussions 

 on natural philosophy is rendered more difficult and dangerous 

 by the summaries and methods of divines, who, after reducing 

 divinity into such order as they could, and brought it into a sci 

 entific form, have proceeded to mingle an undue proportion of 

 the contentious and thorny philosophy of Aristotle with the sub 

 stance of religion. 



The fictions of those who have not feared to deduce and con 

 firm the truth of the Christian religion by the principles and 

 authority of philosophers, tend to the same end, though in a 

 different manner.* They celebrate the union of faith and the 

 senses as though it were legitimate, with great pomp and solem 

 nity, and gratify men s pleasing minds with a variety, but in the 

 meantime confound most improperly things divine and human. 

 Moreover, in these mixtures of divinity and philosophy the re 

 ceived doctrines of the latter are alone included, and any novelty, 



d See the &quot; Clouds&quot; of Aristophanes, where Socrates is represented as 

 chasing Jupiter out of the sky, by resolving thunder-storms into aerial 

 concussions and whirlwinds. Ed. 



e Eobespcerre was the latest victim of this bigotry. In his younger 

 days he attempted to introduce Franklin s lightning conductor into 

 France, but was persecuted by those whose lives he sought to protect, 

 as one audaciously striving to avert the designs of Providence. Ed. 



1 We can hardly agree with the text. The scholastics, in building 

 up a system of divinity, certainly had recourse to the deductive syllo 

 gism, because the inductive was totally inapplicable, except as a verifi- 

 catory process. With regard to the technical form in which they mar 

 shalled their arguments, which is what our author aims at in his censure, 

 they owed nothing at all to Aristotle, the conducting a dispute in 

 naked syllogistic fashion having originated entirely with themselves. Ed. 



s Bacon cannot be supposed to allude to those divines who have 

 attempted to show that the progress of physical science is confirmatory 

 of revelation, but only to such as have built up a system of faith out of 

 their own refinements on nature and revelation, as Patricius and 

 Eraanuel Swedenborg. d. 



